MaClean’s, in last week’s issue, meets with David Keith of the University of Calgary to discuss plan B for global warming.

“When Keith first took an interest in such ideas-lumped together under the broad rubric “geoengineering”-as a grad student 20 years ago, they could hardly be discussed in polite scientific company. Even less so in environmental circles, where many viewed any proposal to manage climate change as a threat to efforts to stop it. “It was a freak show,” he recalls. Verboten in mainstream forums, the topic was only debated at secret NASA and White House-organized confabs.

But somewhere amid reports of melting icefields, worsening droughts, and soaring CO2 concentrations, previously closed minds snapped open. In the last two years, geoengineering has gone from the implausible purview of Dr. Evil-style kooks to a subject of serious scientific and political debate. In the U.K., the Royal Society, the country’s de facto academy of science, has launched a major study (Keith is on the panel) and a parliamentary committee is preparing a report. In the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences is planning a similar probe. Last week, President Barack Obama’s chief science adviser, John Holdren, revealed the administration has been discussing the options, with a focus on scattering-perhaps by plane, balloon, giant floating chimneys, or even artillery fire-massive quantities of sulphates or other aerosols in the upper atmosphere.

The idea is to mimic the effect of massive volcanic eruptions like Mount Pinatubo, which lowered global temperatures by 0.5° C after spewing out 18 million tonnes of SO2 in 1991. But what he didn’t mention should be of particular concern to Canadians. The logical lab for such experiments-100,000 tanker plane flights a year per one estimate-would be the Arctic, where the cooling would be of the greatest benefit, restoring sea ice and turning down the global thermostat.”

Read the full article on MaClean’s.